Broken Unbelief

Some quick scribblings from a recent experience.

Dedicated to Rachel Held Evans who showed me the beauty of broken unbelief.

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Let me hear it for a church built not on belief

but on brokenness.

belief is unsteady.

(sometimes I can claim it and proclaim it

sometimes I unfurl clasped hands

and find nothing.)

At all times though

I am broken

Proclamations and clasped hands or otherwise

I am broken.

Ask me to enter a church with my belief neatly packaged up

it’s too much

Ask me to enter a church with my brokenness

and it’s too much

for anywhere but here

(what makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out, but who it lets in)

“this is my body broken for you”

a broken offering not a creed

a call to be whole in Christ

not correct in doctrine.

Praise Christ who is unwavering in what is demanded

who says to desire is as much of a betrayal as adultery

who tells the rich to sell all for the poor

and yet knows us

says, “no one is good but God”.

An unachievable, compulsory ethic

tell me, with this,

who could stand before God?

if Christ did not stand before us

Christ who says, “this is my body broken for you”

Unbelievable.

So let me hear it

for a church not built on belief,

but on the broken,

clutching a broken body.